The twenty-eight stories in The Greatest Marathi Stories Ever Told represent some of the finest short fiction in Marathi literature. Selected and edited by writer and translator Ashutosh Potdar, this collection features established literary masters such as Gangadhar Gadgil, G.A. Kulkarni, Baburao Bagul, Kamal Desai, Vilas Sarang. Anna Bhau Sathe, Urmila Pawar, Jayant Narlikar, Hamid Dalwai, and others.
In 'Divine Intervention', Chintaman Vinayak Joshi uses a touch of magic to transform the pain of the common man: 'King Maruti' by Vyankatesh Madgulkar and 'Hari's Laughter' by Jayant Pawar underline the cruelty and carelessness of humans towards other life forms; Anna Bhau Sathe's 'Gold From the Graves' tells the story of a desperate migrant worker who is forced to rob graves to make ends meet; Bhaskar Chandanshiv's 'Red Muck' depicts the struggles of rural poverty: Yogiraj Waghmare takes an interesting look at superstitions in 'Crows'; 'Relationships' by Asha Bage and 'And then it Poured' by Gauri Deshpande are telling and poignant explorations of human relationships; and Vilas Sarang explores complex truths about nations and borders in 'Kalluri's Radio'.
The stories in this collection are melancholic, sarcastic, humorous, elegant, and experimental-together, they showcase the range, variety, and vibrancy of the Marathi short story and famed Marathi literary tradition.
Ashutosh Potdar is an award-winning Marathi writer of several one-act and full-length plays, poems, and short fiction. He also writes scholarly essays in Marathi and English and has co-edited a volume of essays on performance-making and the archive, and an anthology of art writing in Marathi to be published by Routledge India and Sharjah Art Foundation respectively. Ashutosh edits I hākārā, a peer-reviewed bilingual journal of creative expression published online in Marathi and English. He is the recipient of several awards for his writing, including the Maharashtra government's Ram Ganesh Gadkari Award. Ashutosh teaches literature and drama at FLAME University, Pune.
Some stories have left an indelible mark on my life. I remember them because they, more or less, speak to me, and sometimes, touch my heart. Through stories, I learned about worlds beyond my own. They allowed me to see how we relate to others and our world. These unforgettable stories keep coming back to me at different moments in life. They also make me reflect on our surroundings, learn, and envision a future. I have been reading stories ever since I learnt to read Marathi as a child. I often feel that I should read them again and again-I discover new layers each time and share them with others. This anthology brings together the best of such stories-short, to be read in a brief sitting-drawn from the relentlessly inventive modern Marathi story-writing tradition. This collection is an attempt to give the reader a chance to dip in and out of some of the best creative reflections of human behaviour and the universe. From stories set in the farmland, home, or graveyard, and from the folksy to the formal; each of the stories in this anthology takes the reader into vividly different worlds and times, exploring seen, unseen, and imagined realities. The stories in this collection travel from the era of Tukaram, Tilak, Gandhi, and Ambedkar to that of modern- day villages, small towns, and cities. The characters include young and old men and women speaking a range of Marathi dialects and representing diverse ways of living, worldviews, and values. Whether it is the battles of the oppressed lower classes and castes, the agonies of a debt-ridden farmer, the struggles of a 'happily- married' woman within her middle-class family or the angst of an inward-looking soul, the stories deal with lives both big and small. Everyday life with successes and failures, accomplishments and adversities are briefly illuminated. The secret and hidden worlds of relationships are laid bare. The narrators, omniscient or speaking in first person or third, tell the stories of animals, birds, lands, neighbourhoods, saints, and even the imagined world beyond earth and common people. They are not mere vehicles for propaganda, nor do they represent an ideology. Rather, imbued with artistic sensitivity and reflexivity, the stories explore the vagaries of the form. The stories are sad, melancholic, mischievous, sarcastic, humorous, elegant, and experimental-together, they showcase the range, variety, and vibrancy of the Marathi short story.
Putting this collection together, observing the translators' work in transferring the expressions of one language to the other while they do justice to the landscapes, peoplescapes, and soundscapes in the stories has been fascinating and revelatory. The discussions with the translators have helped me better appreciate the stories in consideration. A native Marathi reader may be aware of the untranslatability of some of the stories originally written in regional varieties of Marathi set within a specific cultural context. The translations don't mimic the dialects, at times, a reader might struggle to understand the complexities of the contexts that carry regional and caste references.
**Contents and Sample Pages**
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